Verizon’s Holiday Present – A $33 Million Judgment Against a Cybersquatter
Posted January 12th, 2009
Over the holidays, a federal court in Northern California entered a default judgment of $33.15 million in favor of Verizon Communications in what may be the largest cybersquatting judgment in history.
Verizon claimed that defendant OnlineNIC used 663 different domain names that could be easily confused with legitimate Verizon domains (such as “varizon.com” and “verizoncellphonecompany.com”). The judge ruled that OnlineNIC’s efforts were designed to attract Web users who were seeking to access Verizon’s legitimate Web sites, and therefore hit them with a $50,000 fine per violation.
Collecting its due may prove to be more difficult, however. Nobody showed up in court on behalf of the defendant. Furthermore Judge Jeremy Fogel specifically noted OnlineNIC’s efforts to “avoid detection through the use of fictitious business entities, shell corporations and kiting of its domain names.” The judge also ordered the defendant to transfer all 663 domains over to Verizon (which is probably more important to Verizon than the award anyway).
Other cases against OnlineNIC are still pending, including those filed by Microsoft and Yahoo.
For more on this story:
E-Week –http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Verizon-Wins-33-Million-Cybersquatting-Decision/
Law.com –http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202427067112
Network World –http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/122608-verizon-wins-31-million-judgment.html
Posted in Cybersquatting, True Domain Crime by Ernest Grumbles
